24
 
24-hour Play
Also known as ‘Play in a Day’, it’s one of many events cooked up by OUDS* to get people more involved in drama and explore the boundaries of where student drama can go. Good fun.
 
A
 
Angels, Pembroke
An awarding body. You apply to them and they’ll loan/give you money to fund a play according to certain Ts and Cs.
Annet, Margo
An RSC voice coach who is available to help with most student productions and will attend rehearsals if given sufficient notice. She’s really experienced and knows her stuff.
 
B
 
Bid
Essentially a plan or outline for a production. Director, Producer, Marketeer, Production Manager and Lighting/Sound plus whoever else write a statement showing their vision for a show and this is considered by the relevant committee that decides who gets performance slots at the Big Three theatres.
Big Three
Oxford Playouse, Keble O’Reilly and Burton Taylor theatres, in decreasing order of size. These have student slots every term and tend to be seen as a little more exclusive than College-level spaces.
Burton Taylor Studio
A gem, hidden round the back of the Oxford Playhouse. It seats 50 people and is quite small – perfect for intimate and experimental theatre and home to much new writing. There are up to ten slots each term, usually two a week (early and late).
 
C
 
Cuppers
This is an intercollegiate competition, held every Michaelmas term, in which people who haven’t acted before put on a play lasting no more than thirty minutes with others from their College. It can be something devised or an adaptation of an existing script. It’s a fantastic way to get started with Oxford drama. Judges all have experience acting, directing and reviewing but are predominantly students too – it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Cherwell
Best place to look for reviews and what’s hot in the thespy world. Okay, perhaps I’m a little biased, but we aim to preview most student shows and offer opening night reviews, as well as blogs, features and general dramatic pieces. Look to Cherwell.
Corpus Christi Auditorium
A performance space in Corpus. Tends to be quite stuffy but is fairly large and often has decent shows that didn’t get their O’Reilly bid.
D
 
Daily Info
.co.uk – yeah, it’s a website, though there’s a print version every week that appears in trendy high-street cafes and Colleges like Wadham. Often sends reviewers to shows and will advertise them for free. You can find out stuff going on in the wider community and there are sometimes audition postings.
Director
The person whose brainchild you want to represent. Or protect. Or something. You know what a director is, but be prepared to experience many different types of direction, from the read-it-like- this to the I’m-open-to-any-suggestions. Making a good impression’s important even if you get cast, ’cause they might want to recommend or work with you again.
 
E
 
ETC
Experimental Theatre Company is primarily a funding body to help put on plays, preferably (as the name suggests) of an experimental nature.
Edinburgh Fringe
(festival). A handful of Oxford shows tends to go up to Scotland each August to test their mettle in the month-long slog of fawning, flyering and frantic networking. Oh, and performing. Auditions are usually early in Trinity or, if the director’s pretty on-the-ball, late Hilary.
 
F
 
Fire Station, Old
Theatre in Oxford that’s recently undergone dramatic refurbishing. On Gloucester Green. They
should start having plays there again soon.
 
G
 
Garden show
Trinity term sees about a hundred million garden shows. Every College offers one, whether separate or as part of their Arts Week.
Guild, Oxford Theatre
Very respected regional theatre community that produces a few plays a year. Next one to look out for is Breaking the Code. Head over to their site – it’s a great way to meet non-student friendly thesps.
 
H
 
Hep
Apparently it’s like Zip-Zap-Boing, though I never played that one. Much speculation has been cast over the origins and, indeed, validity of many rules in this warm-up game. You’ll encounter it soon enough. Dib-a-Dub-Dee!
 
I
 
I
There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’ – where’s your spirit? There are never one-man shows in Oxford, so you’d better leave your ego at the door, son!
 
J
 
St John’s Auditorium
It’s in St John’s and has a show or two most terms. One of the more-used College spaces.
St John’s Mummers
The College drama society. They put on productions most terms and are a funding body, too. Well, you should hope so – John’s is so rich.
 
K
 
Keble O’Reilly
A very popular theatre, it’s one of the Big Three*. Seating around 180, depending on your stage format choice, it’s one of the bigger ones too. With up to five slots per term, bids are considered by the Martin Esslin Society*.
 
L
 
Lions, Oriel
They’re at Oriel and also might offer you money.
 
M
 
Magdalen Auditorium
In Magdalen, obviously, and quite good for musical stuff – some of the vocal groups like to use it for concerts and it’s home to many an OUG&Ssoc* show.
Magdalen Players
An awarding body; they don’t put shows on but invest in several each term. They usually have a knack of picking some of the best-performing and-grossing productions.
MES
The Martin Esslin Society – Keble’s drama society, offering funding and deciding which shows get the O’Reilly slots each term. Choose your friends carefully. Nah, just kidding.
 
N
 
New Theatre
On George Street, before Gloucester Green. Jam-packed full of touring productions and comedians, it’s a great way to see new and classic shows at affordable prices. I also like to bitch about how poor some of the drama school grads are: gives us hope.
NWF
The New Writing Festival constitutes Hilary term’s (no there’s no entry for that… c’mon!) shenanigans after Michaelmas’ Cuppers. The budding playwrights of Oxford are invited to submit their creations in advance, with the best handful selected for performance in a celebration of home-grown talent. They’re then judged by a variety of different critics with different backgrounds and experiences, and there are prices. Sometimes shows then go on to be expanded and performed elsewhere (‘To Hold an Apple’ went to the Fringe* this year).
 
O
 
OUDS
The reason we’re here. Oxford University Drama Society and damn proud. It’s been going since 1885 (there was a big fancy gala last year and everything) and has produced big names. The website, www.ouds.org, is a hub for audition and production team listings as well as news and information. You can also see what your fabulous committee is planning (and how they’re keeping things ticking over) in their meetings minutes. You can also apply to them for funding.
OUG&Ssoc
Gilbert and Sullivan fans, apply within! Operetta newbies, enquire within! These guys put on one of the famous operettas every term and spend a large amount of time getting drunk on G&T every week. Rollicking good fun!
O*LES
Light Entertainment Society. For the more laid back, less involved types with a casual interest in acting. They put on a good panto, especially in Michaelmas.
Oxford Student, The
Our rival publication (pshaw). They review plays too. And they write some other stuff about drama, I guess. And yeah, okay, they’ve got a site too. Not listing it, though.
 
P
Playhouse, Oxford
Very exclusive, with two student slots a term and 600 seats. The Holy Grail of acting? Hmm, beware the potential pitfalls. Once you’ve graced this stage, you’re at the peak of your game and there’s only one way to go from there. Too much for some, it’s a slippery slope and you might forget who you were.
Producer
Not just enthusiasts with no talent, producers here actually do a lot. They write the budget for plays (many of which here run into the thousands) and have to acquire rights and funding and stuff. They often lose money on productions, so it’s in their interests that a show does well; they often have a large say in casting.
 
Q
 
Queer
Oscar Wilde went to Magdalen. There’s a room named after him. Until recently there was no floor and it was appalling. Now there’s a flower suspended behind a glass pane. Good for rehearsing in.
 
R
 
Round-up, weekly
The University Drama Officer* sends out a bulletin each week with details on up-coming audition opportunities
RSC
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘Open Stages’, one of their flagship outreach projects, allows amateur Shakey-P productions the chance to perform in the Dell in Stratford-Upon-Avon, besides benefiting from RSC voice coaching and guidance.
 
S
 
Simpkins, Lee
An exciting ‘new’ – in that it’s just been refurbished and opened up beyond the scope of the College – theatre in Lady Margaret Hall. It seats almost as many as the O’Reilly but can’t change format and isn’t raked. This term sees the venue’s first bid-successful plays being performed, so all eyes will be on it as people scope out its potential for future productions.
Stash
Want to be the envy of your friends? Ditch the leavers’ hoody (so last year) and get yourself in a play. With marketing getting increasingly inventive… and desperate… even the human body is legitimate advertising space. No but seriously, these hoodies/t-shirts and whatever else tend to be snazzy if you’ve a good marketeer, and act as a good memento of a show. Also kinda like a status symbol.
 
T
 
TAFF
Like OUDS* for techies! If your place is more behind the curtain, you can get lighting/sounds/stage work here.
Theatre Review, Oxford
A revered website, OTR sends two student reviewers to almost every single student production in Oxford, with the reviews appearing the next morning (or, realistically, early afternoon) on www.oxfordtheatrreview.com. Set up a few years ago by two undergrads, it’s gone from strength to strength, now launching websites in Cambridge, Durham and Bristol, as well as the Edinburgh site www.edfringereview.com
Tours
There’s the OUDS Summer Tour, the run of which is usually along the lines of Oxford-London- Edinburgh (for the full Fringe) and wherever else it can pick up. Then there’s the OUDS International Summer Tour, which is always a Shakespeare play and has been to America and Japan (but this year went to Guildford). There are also sometimes independent tours; take a look at Sovereign Arts if you see a posting on OUDS.
 
U
 
University Drama Officer
What’s that? A recent graduate, hired every year, paid to see every student production in Oxford? And there to offer help and guidance in your theatrical pursuits? What untold joy! Lovely fellow, he is. Email [email protected]
 
V
 
Vista
An age-old warm-up that you’re bound to meet pretty soon. Think tribal. Be prepared for raw palms
and thighs.
 
W
 
Wadham Moser
By day it’s a badminton court, but by evening this place can be yours for an exceptionally modest fee. Yeah, Wadham’s awesome. This is also often home to places not quite getting O’Reilly bids, as it’s a similar size. It has a lovely, big stage, though and is good for shows with a strong dance element. Often home to O*LES* shows (don’t let the extra asterisk distract you).
Worcester Buskins
Another College drama society-funding body combo. The Buskins is one of the oldest and most respected drama societies around and has a show every term itself – their shows are usually well received.
Workshop
If you get a callback, which is a good thing and you want it, then it might be called this, or take this form. Embrace it, unless it’s preceded by the word ‘movement’.
 
XYZ
 
XYZ…
Think we’ve missed something? Fancy contributing? Want to keep up to date with reviews, previews, features, blogs and whatnot? Visit Cherwell.org/stage

“I thought it was going to be classier than this, didn’t you?” says Stephen Merchant, breaking off from mimed cunniling us to address his audience. To be honest, I don’t think many of the sell-out crowd at Oxford’s New Theatre knew what to expect from The Office and Extras co-creator’s first nationwide stand-up tour, ’Hello Ladies’, but the sheer amount of simulated coitus was something few could have predicted. For a man who has chiefly made his name behind a computer keyboard as a writer, or behind a microphone on the record-breaking Ricky Gervais podcast, rather than in front of the television cameras or on stage, the physicality of the show in general was perhaps surprising; although when you consider Merchant’s 6’7” stature you can imagine the opportunities available.

Without wishing to lazily trot out the tired old physical descriptions – his Wikipedia page has a section devoted to Appearance, ‘a source of humour and teasing throughout his life’ – watching the man affectionately, yet repeatedly, described by his writing partner (referred to by Merchant simply as You Know Who) as ‘a big lanky goggle-eyed freak’, posing glamour-style for photographs, dancing with long-limbed abandon, and seducing a microphone stand, is a visual treat that few other comics can provide. Yet there is far more to Merchant’s act than gangly clowning. While using the powers of his height to their best ability, he is also at the height of his powers as a writer. Feigned nervousness at the start of the show – “It looks easy on the telly, doesn’t it?” – belies a well-crafted and mature stand-up act. The show centres on Merchant’s ‘search for a wife’ and fame’s let-down as love-life panacea. Confessional vignettes of thwarted love and incredulous observations are brought together with charming sincerity, while sporadic outbursts of faux-arrogance and BAFTA-wielding prevent the audience response from devolving into actual pity.

The great comedians have always been outsider figures, a status often compromised by proximity to success. With Merchant, however, there is no need for affectation; you feel he has always been, toa great extent can’t help but be, the outsider, quite literally standing out from the crowd and witha literally unique viewpoint. Perhaps paradoxically it is his struggle to be accepted, on a personal level, despite the huge success he has achieved, in which the pathos and comedy lie. ‘Hello Ladies’continues until the end of the year, taking in a six-night run at the Hammersmith Apollo and finishing in New York just before Christmas, and it is worth going to see a show that places Merchant among the best working stand-ups today, (forgive me:) head and shoulders above the competition.

It was with a growing sense of unease that I followed How Hip Hop Changed the World on Channel 4, a programme broadcast over the summer which charted – in a somewhat disorderly and arbitrary fashion – the ‘top fifty ways’ in which hip hop culture has become an entrenched presence in societies across the globe over the past couple of decades. In the aftermath of the violent chaos that hit UK cities in August, one felt almost guilty watching rap videos that glorified gang violence, especially those that placed so much emphasis on the flaunting of wealth and material possessions.

Most of us are aware that rap music, and the hip hopculture behind it, emerged as a vehicle of protest for America’s troubled youth back in the 1970s. Even those who are not so aware can find in the urgent, gabbled, verbal torrent of, say, ‘Ready to Die‘ by Notorious B.I.G., an anger and frustration that can, by implication, be associated with deprivation and a lack of direction. Today, it appears that the rap music of ‘gangsta’ culture has seduced some of the young in our cities, who have adopted it as a symbolic gesture of rebellion against the more ‘privileged’ circles of society, from which they feel detached and excluded. 

The appeal of rap music, as opposed to sung music, can be explained by several factors: not only is the spoken word (especially when projected aggressively over a driving beat), far more effective in conveying a direct – although often oversimplified – message to the musically untrained, it is also an idiom available to everyone. In another of Channel 4’s recent explorations of this theme, Life of Rhyme, the veteran MC Akala praises the art of rapping as a form of poetry, which can both unite and educate.

It may be that hip hop can have a positive effect on deprived communities, promoting a sense of community identity, and providing an outlet for the ‘off-loading’ of difficult feelings. But it may also be the case that many of today’s youth are simply drawn by the shallow allure of unearned self-importance and power that this ‘poetry’ promotes. Rapping can become a game of respect, and often celebrates intimidation, swaggering self-confidence, and ‘being the best’. In How Hip Hop Changed the World, Dappy from N-Dubz reveals his first reaction on hearing a song by 30-strong hip hop posse So Solid Crew: ‘When that came out … I wanted to be an MC. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to have girls, and people screaming my lyrics’. Of course, many of us naively yearn for fame when we are young, but it is another matter for young people to be duped by the glamour of unearned fame – or notoriety – into following the example of those dandified thugs who have fulfilled their own desire to ‘get noticed’.

Here we return to the dominant ‘message’ of much hip hop: what lies at the heart of the genre, beneath its images of street warfare and boasts about wealth and drug-taking, is self-aggrandizement. Children, materially or culturally impoverished, and habituated to this raw, aggressive music, may read in it the answer to a successful life: a code of moral inversion embedded in the hip hop lyric implies that ‘status’, being the ultimate aspiration, can be acquired only through material wealth.

These kids are all too aware of their misfortune and impoverishment, but they might take comfort from wallowing in the sound-world of similarly disengaged youth, who provide encouragement to scorn authority, and take what they want – or are brainwashed into wanting. David Starkey’s condemnation of UK ‘gangsta’ culture on Newsnight provoked outrage and widespread accusations of racism, but – even if his views were expressed tactlessly – he was above all addressing a more general condition of cultural ill-health in today’s society, not singling out or stigmatising any particular ethnic group.

Too many of these ‘gangsta’ songs obsess about the miseries and inequity within society; some of our inner-city youths, identifying with the sentiments in these songs, may feel justified in lashing out against those who have more than they do. One of the tragedies of the August riots was that, in some cases, the victims of violence and arson had no more, often less, materially, than the attackers themselves.  

Poverty became an excuse for the young looters: complaints about deprivation fell – or should have fallen – on deaf ears, as rioters bagged iPhones, designer t-shirts, trainers and jeans, and flat-screen televisions. These young adults were starving – not for food, but for status symbols and luxury goods. The proceedings became a race for respect – a form of respect engendered by their immersion in a culture that brags about money, and endorses the assumption that having what you think you want is the answer to both happiness and success. The lyrics of 50 Cent’s ‘I Get Money‘ ring true: ‘I was young, I couldn’t do good, Now I can’t do bad; I ride, wreck the new Jag, I just buy the new Jag. Now nigga why you mad? Oh, you can’t do that.’

Can we wonder that our inner-city youth, brought up with few aspirations, negligible education, and little prospect of employment, fantasize about a ‘happier’ life where success consists of little more than having the ‘right’ things, and proving oneself to be better than one’s neighbour through intimidation and braggadocio? And when our culture as a whole supports and promotes such deluded beliefs, condoning and encouraging youth’s untrammelled right to self-expression and ‘independence’, what can be done?

According to Idris Elba, the presenter of How Hip Hop Changed the World, the summit of hip hop’s rise to power was Obama’s announcement to America of his love for Jay-Z’s music. This was surely not just a gesture of racial solidarity, but also an expression of the governing class’s desperate desire to get ‘down with’ the youth and to earn their respect. We see something similar in Britain today: Cameron may have lamely condemned excessive radio coverage of violent rap music, but it is clear that many years of official non-judgementalism in social policy and education has allowed a culture of crude materialism to dominate certain sectors of society. Moreover, in view of the seemingly continuous decay of morality not only within establishment circles (exemplified by, for example, the MPs’ expenses scandal of 2009), but also among the more privileged in society – including university students – where would these underprivileged young people find moral guidance, were they disposed to seek it?